


Scent

by Vetiver



Series: Senses [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes's Trigger Words, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas Party, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Haircuts, Minor Injuries, Minor Jane Foster/Thor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:14:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21933547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vetiver/pseuds/Vetiver
Summary: Bucky comes home a bit beaten-up after a successful mission and winds up off the active duty roster for a couple of weeks... just in time for Christmas. A holiday instalment to the Senses series (that I admit is a bit of a looser fit to the theme than the first two... but happy holidays!).
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Darcy Lewis
Series: Senses [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1564087
Comments: 43
Kudos: 331





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just to be safe, a content warning for Chapter 1: Bucky receives some minor (to him, at least) injuries that require treatment. Injuries and treatment are discussed but not in excessive detail.

Darcy was going to _kill_ him.

It was the thought that had been running through Bucky’s head from the moment he’d shot down the last of the Hydra bastards that had been doing their level best to literally kill him. Him, and Sam, and Wanda, and Rhodes, to be exact. When they’d followed the trail of intel to a warehouse basement on the fringes of Edmonton, they’d found a bigger nest of vipers than their groundwork had led anyone to believe. The good news was that rooting it out meant a far bigger dent in Hydra’s remaining operations than anyone had expected when they’d suited up three days before.

The bad news was that they were coming home in pretty banged-up shape, and when Darcy saw the state of him she was going to be beside herself. When he said as much, Wanda’s eyes widened. “I’m banged up. Colonel Rhodes is banged up. English isn’t my first language and even I know that ‘banged up’ implies some scrapes and bruises. You and Sam are a little more than banged up. You idiots think you’re bulletproof. If you’d waited two more seconds for me to use my powers…”

“Two seconds are a lot,” Sam replied, grimacing against what had to be at least two busted ribs.

“I was the only one actually shot,” Bucky pointed out. “I can handle it easier than the rest of you.”

“Three bullets –”

“They only grazed me,” he replied, cutting off Wanda.

“Three ‘grazes’, then,” she continued, “one dislocated shoulder…”

“Which Rhodes already helped me reset.”

“Three grazes, one dislocated shoulder,” Wanda resumed, “probably at least a sprained ankle from the way you limped onto the jet, and god knows what else. You even _smell_ like blood. You’re right. Your girlfriend’s gonna kill you.”

“We might as well call it now,” Rhodes added, from the pilot’s seat. “Time of death: about thirty seconds after Darcy gets a look at that mess.”

In spite of the pain – ‘grazed’ might have been an understatement – he couldn’t help feeling a grim pleasure in having mowed down a chunk of Hydra, including a few vaguely familiar faces. The look in their eyes when the trigger words had bounced right off him had been something to behold. There was another kind of pleasure, too, in the way Wanda and Sam and Rhodes were ribbing him, like they would any other teammate. It was new. They’d worked together before, sure, but after months of everybody but Wilson treating Bucky like a live grenade, it was nice to feel like a human. Darcy had done that: her simple choice to be around him and the way she’d helped him start to find a way to live a little more had somehow also warmed up everybody else’s attitude. Or maybe just thawed his own attitude out enough that he could start building bridges with more of the people around him. He couldn’t even start to count the ways she’d made his life better.

And yeah, she was absolutely going to kill him.

As they got closer to the compound, he realized as well that if she saw the jet coming in – and if she was at work in the labs, there was a good chance of it – she’d know something was up when he didn’t come down right away. He’d only been on a few missions since they’d met, but somehow every time he’d found a way to see her practically the minute he got back. Maybe a bit of forewarning would calm her down. His flesh arm was too sore to move much, between the shoulder and the fact that he might have glossed over the fact that he was pretty sure there was some shrapnel lodged in his muscles somewhere; texting was definitely out of the question, but he managed to extract his phone from his pocket with his metal hand and call up her number.

Darcy picked up before the second ring. “Bucky? Are you okay?”

Of course she was already onto him; they always texted, never actually phoned. “Well hello to you too, doll.”

He could hear her taking a deep breath. “God, it’s good to hear your voice. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, I’m in one piece,” he replied. Seeing Sam’s raised eyebrow, he added, “A little the worse for wear, though. We’re almost back, but I’m just gonna need to stop by medical for a quick check when we land. It’s no big deal, just wanted to let you know so you’re not worried if you see us coming in and I can’t get down to see you right away.”

“Are you getting from the jet to medical under your own power, or on a stretcher?”

That at least he could answer honestly. “Definitely on my own two feet, sweetheart.”

“Okay,” she replied, although he could practically see her frowning at him. “I’ll see you soon.”

The second he hung up, Sam gave a low whistle. “Yeah. Good luck.”

“Been nice knowing you, Barnes,” Rhodes added.

Bucky shook his head, stashed his phone awkwardly back in his pocket, and gave them the finger.

Half an hour later, he was limping down the hallway heading to medical when he heard footsteps nearly running, and caught the scent of sugar and incense, and a half-second later Darcy came whipping around the corner, stopping just shy of colliding with him. “Bucky. Oh my god. What the fuck? You are NOT okay.” Her eyes were skipping back and forth from one obvious injury to the next like she couldn’t take it all in. “What the hell _happened_?”

“I swear most of this blood’s not mine, sweetheart,” he told her. “Want to keep me company?” He hadn’t wanted her to see him like this, but he should have known it was inevitable.

“Obviously. Do you wanna lean on me and take the weight off your foot? You’re limping.”

His ankle wasn’t _that_ bad, not bad enough to need the support, but he wasn’t going to say no to putting his arm around his girl, even if it had to be his left arm, and even though she had a decidedly mutinous look in her eyes every time she glanced at the state of him. “I’m a mess. You sure you don’t mind?”

“Come on.” Her arm round his waist was a gentle touch, almost back to the days when she’d made her first tentative forays into offering him hugs. “Let’s go get you patched up, soldier.”

She accompanied him right in, insisted he lie down, and sat fidgeting with her fingernails as she watched the doc check him over. “Given your metabolism and healing ability, most of this will resolve itself in a week, probably less. The ankle’s a bad sprain and for anybody else I’d want to splint it, but even for you, you’ll need to mostly stay off it for a few days, and I’m going to recommend you be taken off the active duty roster for a couple of weeks to be on the safe side.” Glancing over, Bucky saw Darcy’s eyebrows shoot up, but he knew there was worse coming. “I’m going to clean up the bullet wounds.”

“Excuse me, _bullet wounds?_ ” Darcy interjected.

“Yes, two of them are technically just grazes, but one’s a slight flesh wound,” the doctor continued, only glancing at Darcy before continuing to address Bucky. “I’m sure you know it’s going to sting like hell when I clean them out, but we’ll need to get that done right away before they heal up any further on their own.” When Bucky nodded, the doctor took his wrist and turned it over, revealing the area where the shrapnel was lodged under the skin. “But this is the main thing I’m concerned about. The skin’s already started healing over these metal fragments, but we’re going to need to open it back up to get the foreign material out so that it doesn’t cause you problems later.”

“Oh my god.” Darcy’s voice sounded a little wobbly, and Bucky took his wrist out of the doctor’s hand.

“You might not want to be in the room for this, doll, but it’s not a big deal. Doc just needs to clean me up so it heals better.”

She nodded, but didn’t move.

“And I’ve still gotta debrief after this. Why don’t you go back to the lab and I’ll come see you when I’m done? I don’t want to take you away from work for this mess.” Mostly, he wanted to take her mind off it till later, when she’d be able to see how quickly he healed up from this sort of thing. “I’ll call you as soon as I’m done, okay?”

Nodding again, this time she got to her feet and silently left the room. Watching her leave without even a goodbye, he suddenly had the feeling that maybe he really _was_ in trouble, and not just in the way they’d been joking about on the jet. Should he have let her stay? Should he have owned up earlier to the extent of his injuries?

And then from behind the closed door he heard someone burst into tears – and there was only one someone who had just walked out that way. The sound receded away down the hall but there was no mistaking it: messy, gasping, ragged sobs that echoed in his head for way too long as the doctor pried into the flesh of his arm to extract Hydra’s latest souvenirs. Fuck debrief: the second he was patched back up he was off the table and heading for the labs as fast as his damaged ankle would allow.

But the second he opened the door he could see her desk was empty. “Darcy?”

Instead, Dr. Foster poked her head around a doorway. “Yikes, you’re a mess. No wonder she was upset.”

“I… where is she?”

“Your place, I’m assuming.” Darcy hadn’t quite officially moved in yet, but she already spent most of her time there. “Um, Bucky?”

Distracted, he turned back. “Yeah?”

“Look, I…” Jane looked like she wasn’t quite sure what to do now that she had his attention, and he realized they’d rarely spoken. “I know you’re probably fine, or you will be pretty soon, and all this probably feels like no big deal to you,” she said, waving vaguely at the state of him. “But speaking as the girlfriend of another tough guy who does a lot of dangerous stuff? The first time seeing it is really, really hard. The hundredth time is no picnic either, to be honest. Just… don’t treat her like she’s overreacting, okay?”

“I…” About to say that he would never do that, he realized that some small part of him had maybe _thought_ it, or at least not completely thought through just how bad this all looked and sounded from Darcy’s perspective. “I won’t. Thank you.”

When he unlocked his door, his first thought was that Jane had been mistaken about Darcy being there: the lights were off and the place was silent. But there was a scent in the air like beeswax and just the faintest light spilling out of the bedroom. Toeing his boots off, he headed that way and found his girl crumpled up in a corner, sitting against the wall with her head down on her knees. A small candle burned on the nightstand and she’d pulled his weighted blanket down onto her lap. He dropped down to his knees in front of her.

“Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. I didn’t tell you all of it because I was hoping I’d be cleaned up and patched up and on the mend by the time you saw me. I should have known it’d be a shock. Can you forgive me for being an idiot?”

“Are you okay? For real?” she asked, lifting her head and looking at him, her eyes searching his in the faint light.

“I’ve felt better. Gonna have to take it easy for a few days. But I promise, Darcy, I’m alright.”

“And I know you can’t tell me everything that happened out there, but…” She reached up and brushed her thumb over his chin and he felt a rush of relief at the contact. “You weren’t…” Biting her lip, she paused. “You weren’t taking risks you didn’t have to?”

“I never take unnecessary risks,” he replied, more gently than he would have if anyone else had asked the same thing. “I never have. But especially not now. I’ve got a hell of a good reason for coming back in one piece these days.”

At that, she gave the first hint of a smile. “Damn right you do. Are you… Where does it hurt? Can I give you a hug?”

“Right arm and shoulder, mostly,” he said, favouring his left arm as he pulled her close. “And I thought you’d never ask.” It wasn’t exactly the homecoming he might have imagined when he’d left, but having his girl in his arms in a candlelit room wasn’t something he was ever going to complain about. If it weren’t for his filthy tac gear and the awkward position in the corner of the room and the fact that debrief wasn’t going to go away just because he was stalling, it’d actually be romantic as hell.

“I’m sorry I freaked out.”

Bucky shook his head. “Doll, you’ve got nothing to apologize for. I’m sorry I scared you, made you cry. Sorry that I’m coming in here still stinking of sweat and blood and I don’t know what.”

Darcy sighed. “I’ll take it. Look, can we have a do-over on this? I _know_ you haven’t gone to debrief yet and every second Fury is probably getting more and more pissed off at you right now, so why don’t you go deal with that, and I’ll pull myself back together, and when you’re done we can do this whole homecoming thing properly. With less angst and a lot more kissing.”

Now _that_ sounded more like his Darcy. “Sounds good to me.”


	2. Chapter 2

The Hydra op meant a flood of mission details and new intel to go over; it was a solid two and a half hours before they got out of debrief. By that time, Bucky’s arm and shoulder had moved into a duller sort of ache and even as accustomed as he was to spending a long time in dirty tac clothes, he was beyond ready to wash off the sweat and grease and dried blood. And if Darcy wanted a ‘do-over’ on their day, he wasn’t going to walk back in a second time looking and smelling like something out of a dumpster. Heading for the locker room, he hit the showers there, averting his eyes from the sluice of bloody water down the drain and focusing on the smell of the soap instead. Plain white soap like what he'd grown up with – although he had to admit, he was starting to like some of the oddball scented things that were finding their way into his place as Darcy gradually moved her stuff over. His last shower before the mission had been with a rough-edged, pitch-black bar of soap that had smelled a bit like a campfire, and though it had seemed odd at the time, Darcy’s reaction afterwards had gone a long way towards changing his opinion.

His right arm hurt like hell when the soapy water hit it; the bullet and shrapnel wounds were already visibly better than they’d been a couple of hours before, but it’d take a while before everything was back to normal. Closer to the shoulder it was coming out in various shades of black and blue where it had been dislocated, and his ankle looked equally colourful. Still, at least beaten-up and clean was an improvement on beaten-up and filthy, and the soft t-shirt and sweatpants out of his locker felt great after three solid days in the same dirty gear.

Walking in his front door for the second time that afternoon was indeed a completely different experience. The lights were on, curtains open to the last hint of early-fading daylight outside, some music was playing and Darcy was in his kitchen – their kitchen – with a streak of what looked like flour across her t-shirt. And the whole place smelled like cookies. And thank god, she was smiling at him this time. “Thought this might be a better welcome home,” she said, coming over and running her hands up into the still-damp ends of his hair.

Sore arm or no sore arm, he’d be damned if it was going to stop him from putting his arms around his girl. Pulling her a little closer, he stroked the small of her back with his metal fingers. “Wasn’t there something about some kissing?”

“Mm-hmm,” she replied, already leaning in and coming up on her tiptoes. Darcy had been his girl for a month and a half now, and yet every damn time he was a little dazed when her lips touched his, when she made those soft, pleased noises deep in her throat and opened her mouth to him. Such an unfamiliar thing still, the feeling of being welcomed, wanted, loved. Gentle hands and warmth and a home that smelled like butter and sugar. A beautiful woman who cried when he was hurt. He couldn’t imagine heaven being much better.

They’d been standing in the front hall kissing for maybe a couple of minutes when a buzzer sounded, snapping all his senses back to awareness. “It’s just the stove timer,” Darcy said, stepping back from him to turn it off and retrieve a tray of something from the oven. “I guess you haven’t been doing a whole ton of baking up till now.”

“What gave me away, the fact that I was about to pull a weapon?” He kept his tone light, coming over to the counter to see what she’d made. Whatever it was smelled amazing, and made him realize he was actually ravenous.

“Well, and the fact that your oven looked, like, brand new on the inside.” After setting the pan down on top of the stove, she took off the oven mitts – she must have brought both the mitts and the pan with her, because he definitely didn’t remember owning any – and eyed him up and down. “And don’t you dare touch it; they need to cool before I can cut them, and most of them are getting put in the freezer for Christmas. You’re supposed to have that ankle up anyhow, so go sit down.”

She’d made a pile of sandwiches as well, and gave him a knowing look as he wolfed down his third one. “I knew you probably hadn’t eaten all day. Too busy saving the world.” Her voice was teasing, but the look in her eyes was so warm he forgot that he’d spent a lot of the last three days chilled to the bone. “So… how sore are you right now?”

“Shoulder’s gonna hurt for a few days for sure. The rest of my arm isn’t too bad as I don’t hit it on anything, and these’ll mostly be closed up by tomorrow,” he told her, carefully pushing up his sleeve to show that the wounds already looked about a week old. “Ankle’s more or less fine, just have to take it easy as a precaution.”

He was about to pull his sleeve back down when Darcy stopped him, her small hand on his big metal one. “Let me kiss it better,” she said, eyes sparkling with mischief.

Bucky held his breath as she bent down and brushed the lightest of kisses onto spots near, but not touching, the places where he’d been stitched up. Then she slid down to the floor and oh-so-gently pulled his socks off before pushing up his pant leg and kissing his injured ankle. “Can I see your shoulder?”

Getting his shirt off over his head was painful for sure, but it was going to have to come off sooner or later – and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to need clothes again before morning. The whole area around the dislocation was becoming a rainbow of ugly bruising, but Darcy didn’t seem to mind it. Then again, she somehow never seemed to mind all the scarring on his other side either. After a whole series of nearly-ticklish kisses all over the bruised area, she sat up and looked him in the eye, the tip of her tongue peeking out to moisten her lower lip. “Anywhere else hurt?”

About to say no, he belatedly wised up to her game. “Well, you know… I guess my chest is a little sore, with the shoulder thing and all.”

As she dipped her head to trace kisses across his chest – real ones, as she moved away from the bruised area – he couldn’t resist inhaling the scent of her hair, a little like her perfume and a little like whatever caramel-smelling thing she’d taken out of the oven earlier. “You always smell so good, sweetheart.”

“Even when I get it all over you?” she asked. “Last guy I dated used to complain.”

He ran his fingers through her hair, feeling entirely content despite the ongoing aches here and there. “Then he was a fuckin’ idiot. Had to have been, to let you go. I love it when I can still smell you on me. Perfume, or… whatever.”

Darcy gave a little gasp. “Jesus, Bucky, that’s hot. I hope all those aches and pains are confined to your extremities, because I really need to climb into your lap and get rid of a lot of these clothes right now.”

“Mmm,” he agreed, using his metal hand to encourage her to tilt her head back so he could kiss her neck. “That’ll definitely make me feel better.”

Getting out of his sweatpants was a lot easier than getting the shirt off, and Darcy wasted no time shimmying out of her things and climbing back onto the couch to straddle him. The position put her breasts practically in his face and he was only human; running his vibranium fingers up her spine and making her shiver, he teased her left nipple with his tongue before opening his mouth wider, letting his teeth graze over her flesh a little before sucking at the same spot. As he moved over and started the same treatment on the other side, Darcy let out a moan that sent a pulse of heat straight to his cock. He was long since ready for her, and given their position and the state of his right arm he was going to have to let her take the lead, but it didn’t mean he was going to just lay back and forget about making her feel good. Moving his left hand around from her lower back, over the curve of her hip and tracing a path along her inner thigh, he couldn’t help a breathy laugh at the way she writhed, trying to get his fingers closer to where she wanted them. Though the tech wasn’t quite the same as the nerve endings he’d been born with, it could still translate well enough that he could tell how wet she was. “Did you miss me, doll?”

Her first answer was to slide a hand down his chest and wrap it round his cock, giving him a couple of slow strokes. “Every minute, but you fucking know that, James Buchanan Barnes.” Not many people these days ever used his full name, but his girl always made it sound like he was in trouble – the best kind. “And seems like you missed me too.”

She still had her hand on him, but she was raising herself up on her knees, lining him up before sinking down onto him. Slowly, so that he felt every goddamn gorgeous bit of the friction until he was balls-deep in her. Bringing his hand back up to her hip, he held her still a while, changing the angle of his hips a little to see if he could draw some more moans and hisses and whimpers from her – conscious all the while that he was hardly being quiet himself. “Every fucking minute, I missed you,” he said, not caring how strangled his voice sounded on the last word, when she clenched all her muscles around his cock. “Fuck, doll, you’re too good to me.”

Instead of moving up and down his full length, Darcy wrapped her arms around him – tight on one side and carefully on the other, avoiding the bruises and stitches – and kept their bodies pressed close, the gentle, insistent rock of her hips at odds with the delicious tension already radiating down his spine to coil up in his groin. “God, Darcy,” he gasped, struggling to find words. “So good… not gonna last…”

Her breath was hot in his ear. “Me either.” It was only when she tilted her hips a little more that he clued in that she was making room to slide her hand between them, and then all he could do was stare, watching her touch herself just above the spot where he was buried inside her. He came before she did, but it was a near thing, the pulse of her release seeming to draw his own out longer. “Oh _fuck_ , Bucky,” she sighed. “I don’t know if that whole make-you-feel-better thing worked for you, but it sure did for me.”

For a minute, Bucky was too busy kissing any inch of her he could reach, but then he had to laugh, his face buried in her hair. “You know damn well it worked. Always. Now, are you going to take this beat-up old man to bed, now that you’ve worn me out?”

He sometimes joked about her wearing him out, but really, the exhaustion was catching up to him as he made a quick stop in the bathroom to brush his teeth and clean up a little before collapsing into bed with her. “I know it’s not even nine yet, doll, but I’m probably going to pass out on you.”

Darcy just smiled and ran a hand down his chest. “I think you’ve earned it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, it's taking a while to get to Christmas. Bucky's going to realize how close it is in Chapter 3, and start making some plans...


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a couple of fade-to-black moments, but rest assured, smut returns in chapter 4! I was starting to realize I'd given myself a lot of ground to cover and was running out of time to get this finished and posted in time for Christmas, so please enjoy this more fluffy chapter.

He didn’t often sleep later than Darcy, but by the time he opened his eyes the next morning she was already dressed. “You got work today?” he yawned, needing to think for a minute to recall what day of the week it was. Tuesday. He was pretty sure it was Tuesday.

“Yeah, and as much as Jane was awesome about yesterday, she’s probably got a ton of stuff that needs doing, and I haven’t really checked in properly with the other labs since Friday. Last full week for a while, though. Christmas next week,” she added.

“Oh. Right.” It wasn’t that he’d completely forgotten; it just hadn’t been relevant for a long time. Everything had been too raw and confusing last year, what with Thanos and the undoing of the snap and Steve and Stark and all. They didn’t celebrate it in Wakanda. And before that – decades. “Do you… are you going anywhere? To see your family, I mean.” He didn’t dare ask if she had ideas of including him in any of that; who in their right mind would want the Winter Soldier dating their daughter?

But Darcy shook her head, before reaching to collect her hair into a ponytail. “My parents spend their winters in Florida these days, and I am _not_ about the old-folks-in-the-Keys life. Honestly, we’re not that close, and I think me being… gone, or whatever, for five years didn’t help. I see them in the fall before they take off, and then sometime in the spring when they get back. Christmas is gonna be right here with you and Janey and Thor and the rest of my new awesome superhero family. And,” she added, coming over to perch on the edge of the bed. “The one silver lining of you getting yourself all messed up is that being off the roster for two weeks means that you’ll actually _be_ here for Christmas.”

“And what are we going to do for Christmas?” He ran a fingertip over the back of her hand where it rested on top of the blanket.

“Mmm, I don’t know, I was mostly planning to do you,” she replied, wiggling her eyebrows in a way that really looked kind of ridiculous. “Apart from that? Eat treats, watch bad TV, that kind of thing. Jane wants everybody to have dinner at… her place? It still feels weird to say that. I guess I’m going to feel kind of in limbo till I get the rest of my stuff moved in here. Anyhow. Jane wants everybody to do dinner on Christmas Eve. At her place. Is that cool with you? It won’t be nearly as big as the Halloween thing.”

“I haven’t done Christmas in a long time, doll. Whatever you want to do sounds okay to me.” And then he had a thought. “Christmas Eve: that’s a week today, right?” When Darcy nodded, he glanced across to the mirror balanced on top of the dresser; she’d only moved in some smaller things so far, but that was one of them, and he wasn’t used to seeing his reflection quite so often. Maybe that was what had planted the idea in his head, but after Edmonton, he was sure of it. “I want to get somebody to cut my hair. Before Christmas.”

Darcy blinked at him. “You mean like a trim, or like a _cut_ cut?”

“The second one. This mess, it’s a Hydra thing still,” he explained, tugging at a strand that fell into his face. “Only reason I’ve still got it like this is I didn’t feel comfortable thinking about sitting in a barber chair. But I think I could do it now. Maybe if you came with me. Unless… would you hate it, if my hair was short?”

She was silent for a long moment, but he could see that she was winding up to something. “James Buchanan Barnes,” she began, sitting up a little straighter. “First of all, you’d be gorgeous no matter what you do with your hair. Second, and much more importantly, I don’t get a say in this, and I don’t want one. It’s your body. I know there was way too much of your life where this wasn’t the case, but _you_ get to choose what you do with it. But I’m happy to come with you, and Bruce has somebody he goes to, who opens the shop after hours so it’s private; I could get the name from him. Any particular reason you want to do it now? I’m guessing not just because of Christmas.”

“This mission.” He wasn’t cleared to give all the details, but there were some things he wasn’t going to keep from her. “It was Hydra. They had the trigger words.”

“They _what_? I mean, they didn’t work, obviously, because you’re here, but…”

“It was _amazing._ Honestly, sweetheart. I mean, I knew it was gone from my head, but having it happen in the field – seeing the look on their faces change when the words just slid right off me. Felt kinda like it was the last thing tying me to them, you know? So maybe it’s time I felt a little bit more like myself when I look in the mirror.”

To his surprise, Darcy looked a little teary – but she was smiling as she reached both hands up to cradle his face. “Fuck, I’m so happy for you. And you’re right – you should feel like yourself. You want to do it tonight?”

“The haircut?”

She laughed. “Sometimes I don’t know if you’re actually doing an innuendo thing or just being literal. Yes, the haircut. But for the record, that’s a big yes to _doing_ _it_ tonight, too.”

God, he loved this girl. “How about now? For… _not_ the haircut.”

“Mmm. I am supposed to be at the lab in, like, ten minutes, but I suppose I _do_ want to take my sexy long-haired boyfriend for one more joyride before he becomes my sexy short-haired boyfriend.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her over on top of him. “Then why are we still talking?”

Several hours later, Bucky was sitting in the passenger seat of Jane’s car as Darcy navigated through the quiet streets of the next town over. Though it was only a little after eight in the evening it felt closer to midnight; most stores on the main street were shuttered for the day, and there was enough snow falling to keep most cars off the road. The barber shop was one of the few with its lights still on. “How are you?” Darcy asked, as she pulled up in front and cut the engine.

If he was being honest, he felt more than a little jittery – not about changing his appearance, but the idea of someone going round his head with scissors still didn’t sit comfortably. “Let’s get this over with,” was what he settled for.

Stepping from the snowy night into the warmth of the shop was a pleasant sort of shock. It looked friendlier than he’d expected – big wood plank walls and shelves that looked like they’d come from the side of a barn – and smelled good, like a more manly version of some of Darcy’s perfumes.

“Hey, welcome,” came a voice to his left, and he wheeled around to see that Bruce’s barber was actually a woman, a little redhead with tattoos all the way up both arms. “It’s Bucky, right? I’m gonna lock the door so we can sort out your hair in peace here. I’m Alex.”

Alex had to know exactly who he was, but she didn’t seem fazed by it. Then again, he supposed it didn’t get much stranger than Dr. Banner. “I, uh… haven’t had a haircut in a long time.”

“No worries. Pick a chair, and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

Either Darcy had briefed Alex on the phone, or she was just good at reading the room; she pulled up a stool for Darcy right beside the barber chair, telegraphed all her moves when she started working, and showed him every tool before she used it. It was still a tense half-hour, but soon enough she was brushing stray hairs off his neck and telling him to look in the mirror.

“What do you think?” Darcy asked quietly.

Taking a deep breath, he looked, really looked in the mirror for the first time since sitting down. “Holy shit.” It was what he’d wanted, what he’d asked for, but even so it was a shock. The cut wasn’t exactly the way he’d worn it with the Howling Commandos, but it was close, just maybe a little more modern. “Yeah. This is what I wanted. Just… gonna take some getting used to.” He turned to look at Darcy, trying to read her expression. She looked a bit dazed. “Is it okay?”

Darcy ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. “Yeah. Yeah, it sure is. Let’s go home.” Standing up, she somehow managed to pay, get her things on and hold his coat out to him before he’d even stopped staring at the mirror long enough to get his wallet out. “You ready?”

Giving himself a shake, he thanked Alex, got his jacket on and followed Darcy out to the car, shivering a little when the wind hit the back of his neck. He felt lighter – mentally as well as literally – but couldn’t help wondering how it was going to feel to move through the world looking like himself again. The sore shoulder stopped him from raising his flesh hand to feel the short hair more than once, but his reflexes kept wanting him to do it. Inside the car, though, Darcy provided an almost immediate distraction; the moment she had the engine running and the heater on, she turned in the driver’s seat and leaned across to kiss him, open-mouthed and urgent, as if she’d been waiting to do it the whole time they’d been inside. He responded in kind, but when they pulled apart, both breathing a little heavily, he had to ask. “What was _that_ for, doll?”

She gave a hint of a laugh, and ran her thumb across his lower lip. “Didn’t think you could possibly get any hotter than you already were, but I was very, very wrong. I know this is about reclaiming yourself, and I still don’t get a vote about whether you want to keep it this way or whatever, but… we need to head home right fucking now, because otherwise I’m about one minute away from figuring out a way to defile you in the front seat of this tiny, tiny car.”

Leaning in, he stole one more kiss before she settled back down and put her seatbelt on. It seemed like his first real Christmas in eighty years was going to be a good one.


	4. Chapter 4

There were a lot of things to like about twenty-first-century Christmas, Bucky decided. Abundant Christmas lights – even within the compound – were fun, the wild variety of festive hot drinks was something he could definitely get on board with, and it was kind of nice to have zero obligation to go to church. The treats were definitely more abundant, and sweeter than he remembered. Letting his girl go overboard with a big tree and decorations all over the apartment was something he liked, too – though it was more Darcy’s enjoyment of it all, and the way she was going out of her way to give him what she figured was a good holiday, that made him smile every time he saw all the tinsel and ornaments and lights.

The one thing he figured the future had gotten wrong was the music. “Doll, this has gotta be the worst Christmas song I’ve ever heard,” he snorted, listening to a woman warble on about asking Santa for a convertible, a fur coat, and a yacht.

Darcy rolled her eyes at him and swatted at his hand as he tried to swipe one of the cookies she was packing up to take to Jane’s party. “You already said that about the Chipmunks, the Pogues, and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. I would have thought you’d like this one.”

“I mean, the music sounds good and she’s got a nice voice, but nobody likes a gold-digger,” he replied. “Do you have anything I’d recognize in there?”

“Alright, grandpa,” she muttered, but she was smiling as she scrolled through her phone. A minute later, the familiar voice of Bing Crosby filled the room. “But enjoy it while you can; we’ve got to be at Janey’s in fifteen minutes. Do you have your gift for the name draw thing?”

He’d been concerned about finding gifts for the whole team, but instead Jane had organized for everyone to pull names out of a hat. Bucky had gotten Thor, and he was reasonably pleased with the present he’d found for him. Shopping for Darcy had been far more of a challenge. What were you supposed to get for a girl you were madly in love with but had only known a few months? He didn’t even know what the rules really were about gift-giving these days, and she was an independent woman who just bought herself things when she wanted them. She had also been relentless in trying to get hints out of him, to the point where he’d squirrelled away the wrapped gifts in one of his gun cases so that she wouldn’t shake the packages under the tree. At this point it was going to be a relief to let her open them in the morning. But first they had Christmas Eve dinner to go to.

The halls were quiet, most of the civilian staff and support team presumably having gone elsewhere for their own festivities. Bucky had overheard Dr. Foster jokingly describe her party as being for the ‘waifs and strays’, but she wasn’t far wrong. So few of them had any real family outside these walls. Stepping into Jane’s apartment, though, felt like walking into a family celebration. The place was already warm – a window cracked open to let out some of the heat of the oven and the eight or so bodies milling around – full of voices and music and the mingled smells of roasting meat, spices, and wine in the air.

“Darcy! Bucky!” Thor bellowed, waving them in as Darcy looked around in vain for a place to set down all her tins of cookies. “Have some spiced wine!”

Darcy ducked into the kitchen, presumably looking for Jane, but Bucky accepted the mug that Thor thrust into his right hand. “Thanks.” Looking around and seeing all the seats taken, he figured standing in the corner next to Thor was fine. “I guess they don’t celebrate Christmas on Asgard?”

“Not exactly, but we have Jól, which isn’t so different in some ways. Warm fires, feasting, light in the dark season of the year. Here on Earth it makes sense to mark it on the solstice; I’ve just returned from New Asgard this morning. If you’d like something stronger than wine, I brought back a little Asgardian mead?”

Bucky shook his head; he suspected Thor’s Asgardian booze was probably one of the only things that would be able to get him well and truly drunk, but he had no desire to feel that kind of loss of control after all he’d regained recently.

“Oh god, Thor, don’t go offering that stuff around,” Darcy scolded, appearing at Bucky’s side and sneaking an arm around his waist. “We don’t want this turning into a frat party. Dinner’s in a few minutes,” she added, more quietly, as Thor moved away to talk to someone else. “Can I show you something first?”

Bucky followed her into what he realized was her bedroom, or had been her bedroom until recently. It was half-picked-over, most of the everyday things already moved over to his place – their place – but there was certainly still a lot of Darcy in this room. “Jesus, sweetheart, how do you put up with a jerk like me?”

She blinked at him. “What do you mean?”

“I… All this time, you’ve always been coming to me. I’ve never been in this room, or this apartment, really. Shouldn’t have been making you do that.”

“Bucky, you know for a fact you didn’t ‘make’ me do anything, and you probably couldn’t if you tried. Yes, I know you could literally pick me up and put me wherever,” she added, rolling her eyes before he could open his mouth. “But you know that’s not what I mean. Anyhow. It’s true that I thought you should see this room at least once, before I fully move all my junk out of here.”

“Oh yeah?”

Darcy ran her hands up his chest. “Yeah. I particularly think you should see the bed.”

“Right now? With just about everybody we know in the next room?” His protest was only a token one and they both knew it.

“Mmm-hmm. We’ll have to be quick. And quiet. But do you have any idea how many times I thought about having you in here with me?”

He reached one hand down and started sliding her dress up her thigh. “You did, did you?”

“Practically since we met. Never thought then that I’d get to experience the real thing, though.” She was gently pushing him backwards towards the bed, and when the backs of his calves hit the mattress he let himself fall back against it. Darcy tumbled down on top of him, clearly being careful to keep her weight to his left-hand side even though the right shoulder was only a little tender still. “The number of nights I had to lie here with just my hand and a few toys for company, trying to imagine what this would be like.”

“What kind of toys are you talking about here?” It was an honest question; her tone certainly suggested that it was something to help get her off, and he had a vague knowledge that such things existed, but she really could make him feel the full weight of his unfamiliarity with modern life sometimes, without meaning to.

“The sexy, battery-operated kind,” she replied, leaning down for a kiss that left absolutely nothing to the imagination. “I’ll show you sometime, at home. But right now…” Letting the words trail off, she unfastened his belt, unzipped his jeans and reached inside to palm his cock. “I’m not wearing underwear under this dress, and I’d hate for that to go to waste.”

“ _Jesus_ , doll.” He pushed his jeans down, suddenly dizzy with need. In his younger days, he’d always wondered if desire mostly came from scarcity, whether if he ever had a woman who he could take to bed any time the allure might wear off. But with Darcy it felt like the more he had her, the more he wanted her – and she wasn’t exactly shy about feeling the same. Hiking up her pretty red dress and the fluffy crinoline that went under it, she lined him up and sank down onto his cock, the back of her hand over her mouth to stifle a moan.

“Fuck, you’ve gotta kiss me or I’ll never keep this quiet,” she breathed.

Sliding his metal hand up her back, he pulled her down and them flipped them over so that he was on top, managing to do it without sliding out of her. “Gotta make this quick, sweetheart, but I’ll make it up to you later if I have to.” Then he claimed her mouth, their tongues tangling together as he set a pace of long hard thrusts that made him glad there was no headboard to rattle and give them away. It should have been worrying, the idea that any one of a roomful of people could open the door at any time, but somehow it just seemed to be winding him up more. It was clearly doing something for Darcy, too, given the way she was digging her fingernails into his back and whimpering against his mouth. Sooner than he ever would have expected, her thighs were trembling around his hips, a moment before he felt her tense up around him inside with the first wave of her release. He kept on kissing her through it, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to be quiet either, though the inside of his brain was resonating with a refrain of _fuckfuckfuck_ as he tried to hold it together for just a few more thrusts, wanting to stay on the edge as long as he could because it felt so fucking _perfect_. But it was only a few more seconds before he came, hard enough that he saw stars behind his closed eyes for a moment.

“Merry Christmas,” Darcy murmured, looking like the most beautiful, wanton, blissed-out sight he’d ever seen with her dress crunched up around her waist and her dark hair fanned out over the pillow. “That was so hot.”

“That’s one word for it,” he replied, knowing they should really figure out how to clean up and return to the party before they were missed, but not feeling like he had much motivation to move.

At exactly that moment, he heard Jane’s voice in the distance, calling everyone to dinner. “Just in time,” Darcy said, laughing.

“Sweetheart, we can’t walk out to the table like this.”

She tilted her head towards the corner of the room. “Bathroom’s right here. Let me clean up and go out first; I’ll just start some ridiculous conversational gambit and they’ll forget any suspicions by the time you join us.”

He would never be quite sure if her scheme had actually worked, or if everyone else was just too polite to comment on their absence or how wrinkled Darcy’s dress was, but dinner went ahead without incident. If Bucky had ever seen a more heavily-laden table of food, he sure didn’t remember it; he figured Jane must have just taken Thor’s typical appetite and multiplied it by the number of people around the table, and maybe added in some room for error. Turkey, ham, some kind of vegetarian loaf thing that he only tried out of morbid curiosity but found to be pretty good, about eight different kinds of vegetables, all the trimmings, and enough bottles of wine being passed around that the whole room was in very high spirits. Eventually everyone started pushing their chairs back and acting like they’d never have room to eat another thing in their lives, at which Darcy sprang up from her seat with an exclamation of “Presents!” like she was five years old.

They shifted the few steps from the dinner table to the couch – or rather, Thor and Banner took up the whole couch between them, with Jane on Thor’s lap and Wanda perching on the couch arm, Sam and Rhodes pulled their chairs over from the dinner table, and Bucky found himself trying to sit up straight in a beanbag chair, with Darcy sitting on the floor leaning back against his legs. “Wanda, do you want to be the elf? You’re the youngest,” Darcy suggested, as if this was a common tradition that everyone knew about. Bucky was a little relieved to see that most of the room looked as unfamiliar with the idea as he did; there were already enough references he usually missed. “I mean, I’m happy to be the elf if you don’t want,” Darcy added.

Wanda gave her a go-ahead hand motion, at which Darcy practically dove under the tree, coming up with a shiny silver-wrapped box. “To Sam from Bruce,” she announced, handing it over.

Wilson took his time about it. It prompted some protests from Darcy and Jane and – rather to Bucky’s surprise – Rhodes, but Bucky didn’t blame him; there was no sense tearing into the pretty paper if it could be opened carefully and used again. At last, Sam set the folded paper aside and turned the box over in his hands to see the top, but it was all unmarked. “What…?” he began, as he took the lid off, which of course led to a lot more yelling from the rest as everybody got impatient to see what it was. Reaching a hand inside, Sam withdrew a large, fluffy, rather lifelike hand puppet. Of a falcon. “Oh yes, I see what you did there, Banner,” he chuckled. “Thanks, man. This’ll be a hit when I go see my niece and nephews.”

The gifts carried on. Rhodes gave Jane a set of drinking glasses that looked like the planets of the solar system and Jane insisted on passing them around so that everyone could get a good look at them. Sam gave Rhodes a box set of paperback novels that Bucky didn’t catch the name of but everyone else seemed to know, Jane gave Bruce a wooden cutting board with the periodic table etched into it, and Wanda gave Darcy a big box full of loud patterned socks that Darcy went absolutely nuts for.

“To Thor, from Bucky,” she called out a minute later, holding up the big flat package that he’d carefully wrapped the night before.

“Careful, doll, it’s breakable,” he warned her, as she threaded through the crowded room and waited for Jane to get off Thor’s lap so she could hand over the gift.

“What is this?” Thor asked, as if it was a complete surprise that he was being handed something despite watching half the room open gifts already. He tore into the paper with abandon, yanking it free to reveal what was inside.

Bucky had agonized for a couple of days over it; what the hell did you get for an actual god from another planet? But then he’d remembered a moment they’d shared by the quayside in New Asgard several weeks before, and the answer was obvious. “Thank you,” Thor said, his voice more serious as he held up the large framed photo of the Northern Lights. “This means a great deal to me.”

“You’re welcome. Merry Christmas.” Feeling everyone’s attention on him suddenly, Bucky gave Darcy a gentle nudge. “Who’s next, doll?”

He watched as she pulled out a very small box. “To Wanda from Thor.”

Wanda was another one who unwrapped carefully, but when she eventually opened the box and pulled out a small silver orb, she turned to Thor with a slightly puzzled look on her face. “This has… energy.”

“It is from Asgard. Something given to young sorcerers as they learn to focus their power. Not that I think you need lessons, of course,” he added, “but I thought perhaps you might enjoy testing whether your magic would work with this. My… brother had one, when we were young. He could do all manner of things with it.” Bucky saw him swallow hard, as Jane patted his arm; he’d heard a little bit about Thor’s brother, but clearly he didn’t have the full story.

“Thank you so much, Thor,” Wanda replied, sounding a little awestruck. “I will treasure it.”

The room went a little quiet after that, and Bucky almost forgot that he hadn’t opened a present of his own until Darcy plopped something into his lap. “To you from me. I didn’t rig it, I legit got his name!” she added, when some voices of protest sounded.

“It’s true,” Jane replied. “I had Thor draw on Darcy’s behalf because there have been… _incidents_ in previous years.”

“I have other things for you at home,” Darcy said, ignoring the mutter of ‘I bet she does’ from Sam. “This is just a little thing that made me think of you.”

She looked amused, so he was pretty sure it was going to be a jokey gift, but when he had unwrapped it – pulling a small knife from his pocket to carefully slit the tape rather than damaging the paper – and found a heavy, scuffed old hardback book he wondered what the gag was. The smell of it – worn leather bindings and aged paper – gave him a sudden jolt of memory back to the Brooklyn Public Library in about nineteen-thirty, dust motes dancing in the sunlight between the bookshelves. Coming back to the present, he flipped open the cover to find the title page. “The Decameron of Boccaccio, illustrated,” he read out, still puzzling over it.

Nobody else was bursting out laughing, so maybe he wasn’t missing a joke here. “It’s a medieval book,” Darcy explained. “Well, it was written in the middle ages. I think this actual book is from maybe the thirties. I read it in college but almost forgot about it till I saw it in the window and decided you would like it. I’ve seen how you can get lost in a good book.”

She was right; particularly in the past week with being off the roster and not yet cleared to work out in the gym, he’d burned through several books. “I don’t think I’ve ever read anything like this. Hope I can keep up.”

Darcy grinned at him. “You might be surprised. It may be really old, but it’s often _quite_ sexy.” She waited a beat and then added, “Like you.”

There were some laughs and a few groans from around the room – not to mention a thumbs-up from Thor – but he just leaned down and kissed his girl on the mouth, in front of everyone. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

After the gifts there was another round of food, and despite all the protests about being too full, they all managed to demolish the spread of cookies and brownies and tarts and things that Darcy had made, and a few toasts were proposed in honour of Darcy’s baking and Jane’s cooking, and everyone passed things around and took a good look at everyone’s gifts. Eventually, though, it was getting close to midnight and everyone was starting to fade. “Need to get home before twelve or Santa won’t come, everybody!” Darcy announced, and Bucky saw Jane mouth a silent _thank you_ at her.

He collected his book, and Darcy’s box of socks, and held out his other hand to her. “We wouldn’t want to miss Santa. Although I think we might have landed ourselves on the naughty list tonight,” he added, just a whisper in her ear as she put an arm around his waist.

Darcy smacked a kiss on his cheek. “Santa is very forgiving. Let’s go home.”

They had just gotten to their front door when Darcy blurted out that she’d forgotten something back at Jane’s and needed to run back for it. It suited him fine, as it gave him a couple of minutes to extract her gifts from his weapons cases, set them under the tree, and turn all the twinkly lights on and the regular light fixtures off. He was actually on his knees in front of the tree, reaching under the branches to plug the last string of lights in, when Darcy came back inside.

“I know we said gifts in the morning, but your main present won’t exactly wait,” she said from behind him.

“Sweetheart, you already gave me the book and…” Wheeling around to face her, words suddenly eluded him. Darcy was standing there, looking just a little nervous, with some kind of animal carrier in her hands. “What…?”

“I hope this is okay.” Setting the container on the floor, she sprung the little cage door and a sleek white kitten peeked its head out. “I just thought… cats are easy to look after and they don’t mind if you’re gone sometimes and I don’t know, I wasn’t planning this but as soon as I saw her it just clicked, you know? I felt like she _needed_ to be with you. I don’t even know if you like cats.”

“I like cats fine.” He’d had one, a scruffy brown tabby, when he was a kid, but he didn’t think he’d ever told Darcy that. Crouching down, he held out his flesh hand, rubbing his thumb and index finger together to try and coax the kitten over. It thought about it for a second or two, sniffed the air, then trotted right over and started trying to hop up onto him, eventually leaping onto his shoulder. “Does it have a name?”

“She. It’s a she,” Darcy replied. “They called her Alpine at the shelter, but you could change it if you want.”

Holding the kitten so it – she – didn’t fall off his shoulder, he shifted carefully down to sit cross-legged on the carpet. “Alpine. I like that. What do you think, Alpine?” he asked, as the kitten started rubbing her little head against his jaw. “Do you want to stay here with this weird old man and this sweet, beautiful lady who just gave him the best Christmas in nearly a century?”

“Christmas isn’t over yet,” Darcy pointed out, sitting down beside him. “Technically, it’s barely started. And I think she’s already fallen in love with you. I can tell; I know the look.” Leaning in, she gave him a kiss, then broke away laughing as Alpine gave a little chirping meow and started batting at her hair.

“She’s gonna be a handful,” he said, gently lifting the kitten down to the floor and watching as she went exploring under the tree, pouncing on ribbons. “I can tell; I know the look. I love her, doll. Thank you. You always seem to know exactly what I need, even when I don’t know myself. I feel like…” He trailed off, trying to think what it was that he wanted to say, and realized that somehow the addition of a pet made it feel like he and Darcy had just become a _family_ , and wasn’t that the greatest gift she ever could have given him?

“You feel like what?”

He pulled her in for a lingering kiss. “I feel like the luckiest goddamn man in the world.”

THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, everybody!


End file.
